Dr. Cynthia Ashperger

Dr. Ashperger has over thirty five years of professional experience as an actor, director, producer and playwright. She has been a core Acting teacher at Ryerson School of Performance since 1994 and was appointed Director of Acting Program from 2004 to 2019. She received training in Stanislavski-based curriculum and a number of other methods as diverse as the American Method, Balinese Mask, Butoh dance and Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique. Her teaching philosophy has developed as a hybrid of Chekhov technique and other methods and she have disseminated the benefit of hybridization of a variety of methods in teaching in her book The Rhythm of Space and the Sound of Time: Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique in the 21st Century (Rodopi, 2007). In the classroom, she emphasizes investigation. She aims to help the actor find creative freedom through many-leveled acting. She encourages the desire to transform, and the ability to think conceptually and abstractly. She is interested in helping students overcome their creative blocks and she researches and utilizes innovative methods within the traditional rehearsal process. She uses these methods in her directing work. She has directed forty productions and scene studies. As a master teacher she has been invited to teach extensively nationally and internationally. She has also facilitated and raised funds for the Acting Program’s yearly “Croatia Trip”: a week-long intensive workshop offered in partnership between Michael Chekhov Europe and University of Zagreb (Croatia). Her acting work has garnered two prestigious nominations for immigrant themed productions: Dora Award, Outstanding Performance for her role in Jordan Tannahill’s Feral Child in 2013, and Canadian Screen Award, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room in 2016. She is a published author in both academic and creative disciplines. Most recently her musical comedy Foreign Tongue has been published in a collection of plays titled Scripting (Im)migration: New Canadian Plays. She has been involved in new play development as an actor, director and writer with a number of Toronto’s theatre companies such as Native Earth, Volcano Theatre Company, Nightwood Theatre Company, Suburban Beast, 4th Line Theatre and her own playinc.productions.